An initiative of IICD and bridges.org

The bridges.org/IICD Case Study Series on ICT-Enabled Development sets out to illustrate how ICT contributes to development in Africa. The aim of this series is to help ground level initiatives imagine the possibilities of what can happen if they use ICT successfully to overcome development obstacles, and to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the digital divide.

I. Overview

Initiative: The Women's Information Resource Electronic Service (WIRES) is an Internet-based Information Resource Centre designed to provide relevant business information to women in Uganda with the goal of empowering small-scale entrepreneurs. WIRES provides online information on animal rearing, crop growing, trade, and women's issues, and each subject area covers best practices, market prices, support organisations, and the type of support they give. Initially a pilot project, WIRES started by opening telecentres in three sub counties within Uganda.

Implemented by: The Council for the Economic Empowerment for Women of Africa (CEEWA) - Uganda Chapter, which is affiliated with the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET). WOUGNET is a non-profit organisation with a mission to help women use information and communication technologies (ICT) as a tool to share information and address issues collectively.

Funding or financial model: CEEWA is a non-profit organisation and the WIRES programme is supported by funders including the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Hivos, and the World Bank. The WIRES project is currently supported solely by donor funding, but CEEWA-Uganda is researching how to make its telecentres sustainable.

Timeframe: CEEWA-Uganda was formed in 1995, and its efforts in ICT and entrepreneurship began in 1999.

Local context: Approximately 35% of the population in Uganda live under the poverty line with 82% of the labour force working in agriculture (CIA World Factbook, 2002). This heavy reliance on farming underscores the predominantly agricultural nature of the economy. In rural Uganda, it is primarily women who provide for households, either by doing most of the farming or starting small local businesses. Despite this role, men, not women, usually have access to credit and local business exchanges. In terms of access to ICT, the vast majority of those with Internet access live in urban areas, and connectivity is prohibitively expensive. Typically, a dial-up connection costs $30 per month for email only, and email plus Internet access costs $50 per month. The minimum bandwidth leased line will cost $500 to set up, with an entry-level service accommodating a connection for ten workstations at $350 per month. Telephone line rates are $0.15 per minute.

The development problem/obstacle addressed: Women in rural Uganda face many difficulties in starting local businesses: they must obtain credit through their husbands, they do not have time to network locally in order to sell goods, and they are not taught basic business skills. ICT offers an effective tool to disseminate information and allow women to connect, but access to ICT is limited, and the costs of connecting to the Internet are prohibitively high for the typical woman in rural Uganda.

How ICT is used to overcome the problem: The WIRES initiative is creating telecentres and training women in Uganda to use ICT for accessing financial credit, marketing, and getting business tips. CEEWA-Uganda employs local people to manage the telecentres and provides computer-training courses on CD-ROM. So far women have been using the telecentres primarily to communicate with other entrepreneurs, which is helping to raise awareness of common issues among the agricultural community. They are learning about best practices and how to record accounting information for their local businesses.

Next steps: CEEWA-Uganda plans to expand its WIRES programme and create additional telecentres primarily in rural areas. Because men felt left out and have also been demanding ICT training, it will budget for training for males in the community as well. In addition, CEEWA-Uganda wants to expand its programme to show women how to use ICT in their daily lives as well as their businesses.

Geographical area targeted: The WIRES initiative targeted 60 women in rural areas and 30 women in Kampala (Uganda's largest urban centre) in its original project. Namely, these sub counties were Nabweru in Wakiso District, Buwama in Mpigi and Nakawa Division in Kampala District.

II. Gauging Real Impact

This section considers whether and how the initiative has made a Real Impact at the ground level by looking through the lens of basic best practice guidelines for successful initiatives. The bridges.org 8 Habits of Highly Effective ICT-Enabled Development Initiatives are used here as a framework to highlight what the initiative has done well.

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective ICT-for-Development Initiatives

1. Implement and disseminate best practice

CEEWA-Uganda is partnering with local organisations such as the Rural Women Information Network of Uganda ( RWIN-U) to bring its lessons to more rural areas, especially ones that it cannot reach with its telecentre projects. It shares best practices through seminars, workshops, and regular reports to its development partners.

2. Ensure ownership, get local buy-in, find a champion

The CEEWA-Uganda initiative started months before the project implementation began, by hosting meetings with local leaders and community members. CEEWA-Uganda made a priority of forming local management committees and hiring local people to manage telecentres.

3. Do needs assessment

CEEWA-Uganda has institutionalised needs assessments. It performed a baseline study to select the 90 women who were to participate in the project, to establish the women's information and training needs, as well as to understand what non-technology factors would inhibit their success. The implementation phase directly followed from the findings of the needs assessment, concentrating on implementing ICT for marketing, teaching business skills, and access to credit, which were all specific needs identified beforehand.

4. Set concrete goals and take small achievable steps

CEEWA-Uganda's efforts in ICT for development were strictly phased: (1) needs assessment, (2) implementation, and (3) monitoring and reporting. The necessary funding and timing was determined beforehand, and the study was limited to 90 women as a study group. After demonstrating success and learning from the initial project, CEEWA-Uganda is planning the next steps.

5. Critically evaluate efforts, report back to clients and supporters, and adapt as needed

CEEWA-Uganda formally monitored the project every two months, and produced a report at the end of every six months. Some of these reports indicated that many of the women did not appreciate information as a resource; they wanted money, not information. CEEWA-Uganda therefore had to teach women how to use the information both to improve the effectiveness of their local businesses as well as to find credit. CEEWA-Uganda also had to schedule activities and meetings in conversation with the targeted women, many of whom could not attend during normal business hours due to family responsibilities.

6. Address key external challenges

Literacy and education were key obstacles to women's success in using the telecentres. CEEWA-Uganda has begun to provide information in local languages and plans to focus on these issues in its future projects. Another challenge arose because some of the targeted women lived too far from the telecentres and could come to the telecentre on a daily basis. Lacking daily interaction, many women did not become completely comfortable with using computer technology. CEEWA-Uganda will address this problem directly in future implementations.

7. Make it sustainable

The WIRES project is currently supported solely by donor funding, but CEEWA-Uganda is researching how to make its telecentres sustainable. They are aware that in the absence of funding, telecentres must find profitable business opportunities that serve real community needs such as business and entrepreneurship training, computer and Internet training, and business facilities and administration.

8. Involve groups that are traditionally excluded on the basis of gender, race, religion or age.

CEEWA-Uganda targets its activities toward women.

III. Lessons Learned

We invited Goretti Zavuga, who directs CEEWA-Uganda's efforts in ICT and entrepreneurship, to share her views on the WIRES project's greatest success, the challenges faced, key constraints and dependencies that affect the project, opportunities for future improvement, and other lessons learned. This is what she said:

"It is crucial that our managers are trained in ICT. When I began this project, my skills in ICT were still basic, and there was no provision for capacity building. I learned on the job, although it was very costly to make mistakes. One example of why this is important was during a contract negotiation. We found that networking consultants wanted to take lots of money for simple jobs. Once I understood what these jobs really entailed, I was in a much more powerful position to bargain.

In implementing projects on the ground, I have learned that you have to be patient with the audience. This often depends on age: the youth are quick to learn and the elderly are much slower.

You must also involve the people in their own destiny as it relates to information. You must have a participatory approach, even in your baseline study. The local people must own the ideas, and in order for that to happen, you must explain and come to a level at which they can understand you. They cannot consider you elite women from the city; they must see you as partners in the development process."

IV. The Story
This section presents a narrative description of the initiative that highlights why this use of ICT for development is particularly interesting.

Rural Uganda is a difficult place for women. Many women are the primary providers for households, either responsible for doing much of the agriculture work, or running a small business. Despite this role as providers, men, not women, usually have access to credit and local business exchanges. The Uganda chapter of the Council for the Economic Empowerment for Women of Africa (CEEWA) tries to rectify this problem and help women find the financial resources they need directly. In addition, as part of its Women's Information Resource Electronic Service (WIRES) initiative, CEEWA-Uganda recently brought information and communications technologies (ICTs) directly to the villages by building local telecentres.

Women business owners in the small rural town of Nabweru, where one of CEEWA-Uganda's telecentres is located, however, wanted money, not the Internet. CEEWA-Uganda believed that empowering women with ICT would provide them access to credit in addition to dramatically improving the scope and method of their business. Of course, rural women took some convincing. Before building the telecentre, Goretti Zavuga, who leads CEEWA-Uganda's ICT implementation in rural areas, held regular town meetings to get women involved and better understand local business problems. In addition to accessing credit, women had trouble finding time to network, and often needed to be coached in basic business skills.

Incorporating these needs and women's unique schedules into the telecentre, CEEWA-Uganda began construction of its telecentre. Charcoal business owner Margaret Nabanja and chicken feed supplier Samailie Byabagambi now testify to what ICT can do for rural businesses. After training these women business owners to use computers and the Internet, they were able to find new sources of credit and change their entire way of doing business. They now order supplies using the phone and access market price information over the Internet. They have both been able to expand their businesses and are so sold on technology that they own mobile phones. Nabanja and Byabagambi, who had never touched a computer before, are now teaching their fellow villagers how to surf the Internet.

Men felt a little left out though, with all this attention being paid to their wives. In future WIRES projects, WIRES will also budget for training rural men and allowing them to use the telecentres. In addition, CEEWA-Uganda plans to develop training programs to help women use ICT to enhance their daily lives as well as their businesses.

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Author: bridges.org
Date: 12 November 2003

About the bridges.org/IICD Case Study Series on ICT-Enabled Development

This case study series on ICT-enabled development aims to disseminate best practice examples of how information communication technology has been successfully used by ground level initiatives to alleviate poverty. Case studies are an effective tool for examining what works best, what fails, and why. The intention of this series is to share knowledge and catalyse lessons learned about ICT by local organisations and the international community. The current focus is on efforts based in Africa.

The case study series is an initiative of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) and bridges.org, two organisations that share the goal of encouraging the effective use of ICT in developing countries. IICD is an independent non-profit foundation, established by the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation in 1997 and based in The Hague. Bridges.org is an international non-governmental organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa. This initiative is supported by the Building Digital Opportunities Programme (www.iconnect-online.org), funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Directorate General International Cooperation (DGIS), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)